We supply both the arms and the market to an unstable country.
Just a week
after headlines blared the escalating violence of the migration from Mexico, a
powerful new movie by Cary Fukunaga has burrowed deeper into the problem. “Sin
Nombre,” based on a true story, puts faces on the statistics. The statistics are
ugly: a multi-billion dollar American market for drugs crossing the border, and
smugglers, newly armed with millions of dollars of arms sold to them by American
arms manufacturers. We supply both the arms and a hungry market to an unstable
country.
The spreading
violence is becoming wrapped as one with the export of drugs to the U.S., a
barnacle on the cocaine shipments. Tucson is now known as the “kidnapping
capital of the U.S.” States bordering Mexico are becoming infested with new
crime. And all the while, innocent Mexicans caught in the violent chaos of their
own country, are threading their way north in pursuit of the American dream.
Writer/Director Cary Fukunaga has threaded his way=2 0through the Sundance Labs
during the making of his movie, through Cannes where he won a prize for it, and
into theaters where ordinary audiences are getting the taste of Mexican
heartbreak and the American challenge. It is a beautifully made first film.
The story
opens with the brutal initiation of spunky young Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer) into a
street gang in Honduras. After the leaders inflict a terrible beating and demand
vicious tests of will, Smiley is lured away by Willy (Edgar Flores) who has a
second thoughts about gang life. They will ride toward Guatemala and eventual to
Mexico on the packed roofs of train cars that slip northward in fits and starts,
always at the mercy of bandits. As they roll through the countryside, we see the
street life survival that is the destiny of the people. Death is nothing;
machetes, pipe guns and pistols are the tools of daily life. It is a world of
hand signals, codes, initiations, and tests, with death t he penalty for a
misstep.
The monstrous
shadow of the gang La Mara hangs darkly over Smiley and Willie and Willie’s
loyal new girlfriend, Sayra, as they try desperately to stay alive on a
treacherous journey. Director Fukunaga rode those trains. He talked to the
leaders of La Mara for explanations of their rituals and vengeance. As
compelling as Fukunaga’s fictional characters are, it is the power of the gangs
we must understand. It is they who are at the hub of the huge financial deal
between America’s gun makers and gangs like this one. And it is we, of course,
who provide the open market.
Cary Fukunaga
has made a superb film about the violence of the migration from Mexico through
the eyes of several authentic non-actors who represent the flood of people
risking their lives to move from a country in chaos to a country that is
ambivalent about their arrival. It gives us one more moving visual image of the
problem that seems to have no solution.
Copyright (c) Illusion